


The Day He Died

by gauntTwister



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Brief Gore, Death, phicphightstuff2k19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 10:01:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20445293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gauntTwister/pseuds/gauntTwister
Summary: Portal au - Danny is alone when he goes into the portal, and that makes it so much worse.Prompt by Charcoalhawk (Tumblr)





	The Day He Died

The noises from downstairs had finally stopped. That meant it would be another five minutes - ten, maybe - until his parents went up to bed. He could hear his father tromping up the stairs already (he was not a small man, and he tromped rather easily), and the voice of his mother followed. She seemed content; his father just seemed tired. He waited until he heard their bedroom door close, and then threw off his bed-covers and tiptoed to the door that led out to the hall. The house was pitch-black, but he was undeterred. He knew which of the stairs creaked, where to step to avoid smashing his toe on the kitchen table, and how to unlock the heavy steel door to the basement without making a sound. Regardless, he always held his breath as he pushed it open, afraid they'd caught on to him and installed an alarm system or some-such. They never did.  


The stairs to the lab were almost unbearably cold; industrial steel was much less forgiving than carpet or tile, and he scampered down as quickly as he dared (at least the lab itself was heated, he thought - those stairs had always been a bit too drafty). He peered into the space just to make sure he was alone, counting tools on the wall and shadows across the floor. A single yellowed lamp stood on the worktable in the corner of the lab; he'd never seen it completely dark down here, which he supposed was for the best. When he was small, he'd get scared of things in his closet or under his bed where it was dark. He couldn't imagine what sort of childhood monsters might make their home down here if given this much space.  


He flicked one of the work-lamps on, flinching from the little _*click!*_ it made as if either of his parents could possibly have heard it. He knew, of course, that they hadn't, but even a tiny sound like that cut the silence of the lab and set him on edge. He glanced upwards. His parents' room was just on the other side of the ceiling; once he could hear his father's snores from the ductwork that connected the rooms, he would allow himself to plug in the old CD player on the worktable just so that he wouldn't have to be down here in silence. His CDs, he thought, were so much better than the ones his parents listened to as they worked. Old seventies hits? _Boring!_ He reminded himself, as if this was the first time he'd ever stolen downstairs in the dead of night, to replace the disk when he was finished. _No sign you've been down here._  


He turned then to the project at hand. His father, mostly, had been the one to talk about it; it was particularly easy for Danny to overhear everything he needed to know without saying a word about any of it. That was what he wanted, and that was why he was down here while his parents were asleep: he was interested in ghost-catching, and did his best to learn as much as he could, but just without _saying_ so. Parents, in his mind, immediately made everything lame, and his were no exception. He'd never hear the end of it - he'd be miserable! So, in true teenager fashion, he denounced all of it as loudly and as frequently as he felt was necessary to get his point across, and when he was certain no one would bother him he pursued his interest in secret.  


He inspected his parents' work first before he dared touch a thing. It was meant to be a ghost portal, his father said. Danny wasn't quite sure if putting something like that in one's basement was such a good idea, but his mother had been the one to draw up the blueprints, and she was the one, at least between the two of them, to think her ideas through. He decided that he'd trust her judgment on the matter.  


He found himself wondering what such a thing would be like if it ever came to fruition. Where could it possibly open up to? His mother was under the assumption that spirits inhabited a different realm entirely, but she'd admit that she didn't have the faintest clue of what it might look like or how anything might work there. She'd said that once it was finished, and they'd had a chance to activate it and run some tests, that they'd publish their findings and the Fenton name would become famous.  


Danny thought about that a lot. He sat in silence before the portal as if it were a monument, wondering if he'd get the chance to explore a world inhabited by the dead. It thrilled him, in the same way that thinking about exploring the depths of space thrilled him, and as the snores of his sleeping father drifted down to him through the ductwork he couldn't stand it any longer.  


He had to get his hands on this thing.  


He kept the CD player as quiet as he could - he still had to be able to hear if anyone came down looking for him, after all - and turned his attention to the array of tools on the wall. He saw the jumpsuit that his father had sewn for him - an ugly black-and-white thing, hanging up in the same place it had been since its construction. His parents assumed he'd never worn it, and he knew better than to ask them to sew him a better-looking one. _I'd never hear the end of that conversation,_ he told himself, glad that he was alone so no one would see exactly how stupid he looked in it. He'd tried once to pretend it was a spacesuit - and why not? astronauts wore white - but without the helmet he couldn't convince himself, and he'd given up on that little endeavor. He pulled the suit on anyway.  


He pulled the work-lamp over so that it would give him enough light in the tighter space, and turned to an open panel on the side of the portal. He didn't dare touch anything until he knew what had been done since last time he'd seen it; he came down to the lab only a couple of times a week, since he couldn't afford to stay up all night every night and still be able to function during the day, and he got distracted by projects his parents had left out as often as he got to poke around the portal. _Let's take a look,_ he thought brightly, sifting through the half of the controls that had already been wired in. _Hey, this doesn't look too hard._ His gaze turned to the soldering iron resting on the table. _They'll never notice that I'm helping them,_ he told himself somewhat smugly. His father, in particular, was forgetful; the man could - and often did - lose his tools in his own hands when he wasn't paying attention, and even his mother tended to get so absorbed in her work that she'd forget entirely where she'd left off.  


With the soldering iron at the ready, he set to work. He wasn't as practiced as his parents, but he was always over-careful, and he thought that made up for his inexperience. He'd told himself once that he was going to start building little things - a miniature ghost blaster, perhaps a simplified version of his father's spirit speaker - to get more experience, but he never did. He'd even cleared out a space under his bed to stash them away, but just last week he'd shoved a stack of spaceship model kits down there instead. Maybe he'd crack one of those open over the weekend, he thought. He'd been saving them for a rainy day, but he hadn't put one together in almost a month now, and it was starting to make him antsy.  


He set the soldering iron down and inspected his work. He almost couldn't tell where his mother's job left off and his picked up; he knew that she'd attribute the job to his father, and that he wouldn't argue about it. He liked to think that he'd be better than both of them at this one day, but couldn't see it happening anytime soon. He set the face of the control panel onto the wiring underneath it; it gave an affirming click as it slid into place, and he couldn't help but smile to himself. If anyone ever found out about this, he'd never hear the end of it - but it was so satisfying just to be involved at all.  


He turned back to the open end of the portal. From where he stood at the rear, it almost looked like it could be part of a lunar station or shuttle; its conical shape gave it an alien air, and a long line of lime-green LEDs across the top reminded him of a set he'd seen in a space movie once. It made him giddy all over again, and he couldn't stop a grin from spreading across his face.  


He wondered how close this thing really was to being finished. Every time he'd come down, there had been a decreasing number of open panels on the thing, and for the first time, it really _looked_ finished. His mother had made a comment a few days ago that she didn't know he'd caught - _if it wasn't for the radiation inverter I'd almost say we could have this thing done by next week_ \- and he wondered what, exactly, that meant. He couldn't stop himself, though; he'd have a look at it anyway, even if the tech was starting to go over his head. He turned to the other side of the portal, decided between two access panels in a brief eeney-meeney-miney-moe, and carefully pulled one open. He knew at once that it was Jack's doing; how his mother could ever sort through such a mess on a daily basis was beyond him, but he reminded himself that he was just looking this time, and he didn't have to fix anything.  


He found himself pulling half the wiring out anyway. He held a pair of stripping-pliers in his teeth as he went - _man, I don't have enough hands for this_ \- and discarded at least a dozen of Jack's unnecessary work-arounds. _Jeez, Dad, what were you thinking? I mean, I guess it works, but..._  


He spotted, mounted by itself in a deliberately-empty corner of the space, one of the four main power cores. It appeared harmless but he knew better than to touch it; if even his father had left a wide berth around it, chances were good that it would probably electrocute him if he did. _Yeah, no thanks. I'll pass on that one._ He finished the last of the rewiring, replaced the access panel, and then paused for a moment to sit and think.  


_What if I tell them I've been coming down? Maybe they won't freak out too much about it, so long as I tell them up front not to. They'll be proud of me - I know they will._ With a frown, he shook his head to clear his thoughts. What was he thinking? Even supposing Maddie didn't fuss, his father would pick up the slack and fuss enough for both of them. _You'll never hear the end of it,_ he reminded himself. Still, he thought it would be nice to get a little bit of recognition. Every once in a while, his parents would tease each other about the gremlins in the basement. _They've finished up the wiring in the back,_ she'd say, _maybe there are such things as benign ghosts after all!_ She and Jack would always have a good laugh about it.  


The CD in the player on the work-table went quiet. He knew how long the tracks were; it had been forty-seven minutes, which meant nearly one in the morning. He waited for the disk to spin down to a halt, and then hit play again. He'd have to finish everything by the time it was done if he wanted to be functional in the morning. Then again - he'd just had an essay test in first-period, and he supposed that perhaps he could afford to sleep through it. Half the class did some days.  


He turned back to the portal, tearing open another access panel. Perhaps his parents were right, he thought mischievously; perhaps there were gremlins in the basement. This particular gremlin, though, was determined not to get caught. He amused himself with that as he inspected his mother's handiwork. _Hey, so that's what a radiation inverter looks like. Cool. Wonder what it does?_ He couldn't tell just by looking at it, and he was hesitant to crack it open to find out. Radiation was awful, and he knew he'd never be able to undo that kind of mistake. _Maybe if I'm lucky Dad will mention it tomorrow._ His eyes slid down to the inverter again. _Maybe so long as I'm really careful, I won't break it. I just wanna see how it works._  


He hesitated, finally reaching out with one finger and giving it a tiny poke. Nothing happened. _Okay, seriously, you shouldn't screw around with that. Quit it!_ He pulled both hands away, debated internally for a moment, and then set the access panel back in place. _What are you, stupid? If you don't know how it works don't touch it!_ He turned away, eyes tracing the perimeter of the structure so he could find something to work on to distract himself. Several smaller panels hung open, as if to invite him, but his gaze settled on one that was already partway finished. _This one won't take too long._ It didn't look horribly difficult, and he told himself he really should get back to bed afterwards. Finishing up a few little things during the night was one thing, but a gremlin could only accomplish so much without risking being noticed - or worse, caught.  


Partway through stripping one of the wires, something behind him clicked. He froze, wide-eyed, and held his breath. _What was that? I know I heard something._ He turned slowly, suddenly aware of how alone he was. He couldn't reasonably expect anything to come of it - _what, like anyone's heard me down here?_ \- but it didn't stop the what-ifs from crawling into his head. He thought first of his mother. What would she say? He peered around the open end of the structure and to the stairs, knowing that even if he was able to hide inside an empty compartment or some-such that she would still know that he'd been down here. _I'll just finish this up real fast. Then I'll be done._ He turned back to the handful of wires he was holding - two or three splayed out in between each of his fingers so he could tell them apart - and soldered another one onto the circuitboard. _Hey, maybe I am getting better at this._  


He was nearly finished when one of the diodes popped. The smell of burnt wire made him wrinkle his nose, and he grumbled to himself. _Aw, hell, maybe I'm not almost done._ He turned back to the open lab to hunt down the box of small-computer-parts that he knew was around here somewhere, and maybe set his CD to play through again. It had come around to the last track, but he decided ultimately that no, if he hit play again it would be quarter-to-three in the morning by the time he got up to bed. He could get by with little sleep most nights but not that little.  


He pulled one of the drawers in the storage cabinet open, the stripping-pliers still held by the handle in his teeth, and began rifling through his parents' things. He was meticulous, but only to the point where he knew they wouldn't notice anything amiss. He pulled the box off the shelf, peeked inside, nodded to himself, and turned back to the portal.  


It wasn't until his CD player finally went quiet that he noticed it - an unassuming hum, coming from behind one of the access panels. A wave of fuckor struck him. _Was it doing that before?_ Something told him it wasn't, and he realized that, judging by where it was coming from, it was probably the radiation inverter that was making the sound in the first place. He reached out of the portal and set the pliers down on the work-table beside it, turning to the panel and pulling it open a little more quickly than he had the first time. _Oh shit, I knew I shouldn't have touched it - dear god I hope I didn't break it -_  


The inverter had begun to glow a soft lime, and Danny panicked. _Fuck, how do I turn this thing off?_ He turned back to the circuitry he'd been working on and realized: maybe there was a reason they left this one half-finished. _I'm so fucked._ He knew that he'd have to be quick about it. He kept one finger on the circuitboard where he was certain he'd started so that he wouldn't lose his place. _Shut the power down, disconnect everything, and blame it on the gremlins. Yeah, that sounds good -_  


His heart stopped the second he touched the switch. Something clicked into exactly the right place behind one of a hundred panels, and electricity coursed through him. He seized up, unable to let go of the switch even if he were able to tell himself to; the skin on his chest and arms erupted into blisters and then began to burn; something else within the portal activated; the muscles in his back contracted all at once, fracturing his spine in a series of sickening cracks; the hum from the portal increased steadily, feeding on his dwindling life force; his eyes boiled, burst, and streamed down his face; sparks flew from both his hands, burning pinprick holes through his jumpsuit; the charred flesh on his arms and his chest twisted and split open; boiling blood and fragments of viscera spilled from in between the widening cracks; finally, with nothing left, the smoking husk dropped to the floor with a hard thud.  


The portal finally roared to life.

\- - -

Maddie couldn't sleep. She'd slipped into dreams for an hour, but something in her startled her awake all at once. Something was wrong. She didn't know what, or how she knew - she just _knew,_ and it made her gut twist. She listened for a moment. Did someone get into the house? Had one of the kids gotten sick? She knew she stood no chance of getting back to sleep unless she checked. She swung her feet over the side of the bed and onto the floor; tiptoeing over to the door, she glanced over her shoulder to make sure Jack hadn't noticed - he hadn't - and then crept out into the hall.  


The house was dark, but that didn't make her feel any better. She cast a glance down the hall, checked briefly in the bathroom in case either of the kids had gotten sick, and noticed that the night-light over the sink had gone dark. _Have to replace that next time I'm out,_ she told herself tiredly, turning to the two doors at the other end of the hall where the kids slept. The reasonable part of her was certain they were fine. Of _course_ they were fine, she scolded herself. She still had to make sure, if just to put an end to her unrest.  


She cracked open the door to her daughter's room, careful not to make a sound. Jasmine lay sprawled, one foot hanging over the side of the bed, stuffed bear clutched under her arm. Maddie refused to intrude further, closing the door behind her and turning to the last door at the end of the hall. She noticed it had been left ajar, and she peered inside.  


Her heart skipped a beat; Danny was gone.  


She froze, momentarily overcome with dread. Her hand tensed over the doorknob, and her breath hitched. _Where is he?_ "Danny?" she whispered, thinking maybe he'd just fallen asleep at his desk. She leaned further into the room; the desk, too, was empty. Her hand fumbled for a second before finding the light switch behind her, and she flicked it once. Nothing happened. She flicked it a few more times before turning and giving it a disbelieving look. "Danny?"  
There was no answer.  


Maddie turned back to the hall, stamping down the what-ifs that had begun to clamor in her head. _Quit fretting - I'm sure there's a reason for this. Power's out, too. Better see to that._ She paused at the top of the stairs, giving the door to the master bedroom a glance. She could still hear her slumbering husband's snores, and she gave herself a disapproving shake of the head. _Christ, Madeline, let the man sleep._ She crept down to the living room, nearly smashing her toe on the side of the couch as she felt for the side of the end table in the dark. She pawed at the front, pulling the top drawer open, and retrieved a flashlight. She clicked it once, immediately forced to squint from the brightness of the beam, and then swept it across the room. Like a photograph, everything was still. The only thing she heard was her own heartbeat, which had begun to climb up from her chest and into her throat. _Where is he?_  


Flashlight in hand, she made her way into the kitchen. Downstairs, she was less concerned about waking her husband or her daughter, and she allowed her voice to carry a little further. "Danny?" She could see the back door through the side hall - the fuse box was in the garage, and if the power had gone out she knew she'd have to have a look at it. _Strange, though. What could have caused a thing like that?_ The knot in her gut had settled in, and she was increasingly convinced that something beyond the outage had happened. She couldn't explain it; she knew it in the same way she knew when Danny was lying - which he didn't do often, bless him - or if Jack had accidentally left the acetylene torch on in the lab after a long day. Sometimes, there were no explanations. She had heard that a lot in her childhood but never believed it. Now that she was a mother, she understood. _Sometimes, you just know._  


The door to the laboratory downstairs hung ajar, and a spike of panic pierced her. She knew she and Jack always kept it locked up when neither of them were there; she even remembered shutting it down for the evening. A thousand different tragedies echoed in her mind at once, and she tore down the stairs without a second thought. "Danny? Danny, are you down here - ?"  


She came to a halt at the landing. The flashlight dropped out of her hands and clattered to the floor, going out in an instant, but it no longer mattered. An unearthly mist wafted slowly across the floor, creeping out from the far end of the lab; the portal was not only finished but open, and ghastly light poured from the rift. The mist swirled gently, as if not wanting to be disturbed, and a low hum was the only indicator that the device was mechanically powered.  


Maddie was in shock. Her life's ambitions had just been fulfilled in the middle of the night, and with no forewarning, and yet she could think of one thing and one thing only: _what happened to my son?_  


She was forced into action all at once. She flew up the stairs, through the kitchen, and up again into the master bedroom. "Jack!" she cried, flinging the covers off of him, "Jack, wake up!"  


Her husband snorted, rising although not awake yet, and turned vaguely to her. "Maddie?" he mumbled, "What's going on - ?"  


"It's Danny, he's - "she couldn't hold herself together any longer, and burst into panicked tears. "The portal - in the basement - "  


Jack was shoved all at once into awareness. "What? The portal - what about it? Maddie, slow down," he rested one hand on her shoulder, knowing that he only had a few moments to calm her before he began to panic too, "What's going on? Take a deep breath. Tell me what happened."  


Through sobs, Maddie did. "Downstairs - I went to check on Danny - I thought something was wrong - he must have got into the lab, I know he did - I found the portal - it's _open,_ Jack! - I thought he might have gone through - "  


For a moment, Jack was silent. The Fenton Portal - open? He had begun to doubt whether that was even possible. He realized that whether or not it was _possible_ was no longer relevant. Maddie had said it was. That was all that mattered now. He stood, his hand still on her shoulder, and turned. "Show me."  


Maddie complied, still sobbing, and led him downstairs. The lab door had been left wide open after she'd gone down, and they could see the greenish glow from the portal before they'd even reached the landing. In the quiet, she was certain she heard things whispering from the other side, and the thought of Danny being with them made her nauseous. She turned to Jack. Her voice was just a whisper. "I told you, Jack. I know he's in there."  


Jack stiffened. Part of him, at least, hadn't expected to see the thing really be functional at all. He'd seen it in various stages of construction for months - to think that it had miraculously activated itself overnight was ridiculous, even by his standards, and yet the haunting glow from the gateway itself was undeniable. If it had been completed under better circumstances, he thought that they would have been celebrating it. _But Danny's in there._ He rarely took Maddie at anything other than her word, and what she'd said had become fact in his mind. "What do we do, baby?"  


Maddie turned to him. She was scared out of her wits, but the certainty that her son's life was in her hands kept her grounded. She saw the tools that had been left out, but would ignore them until later; she turned instead to the locked case of ghost weapons they'd built over the past few years. "I'm going to go in there after him," she told her husband, suddenly deathly calm, "You're going to help me."

\- - -

Danny hurt.  


His awareness came back to him in pieces. He only knew he was alone, and that his body was broken. Quiet things, slippery and distant, whispered to him, but he neither heard nor listened. Everything was weightless and still; it was as if he could almost go numb and slip a little further back out of existing at all. _Almost._  


The pain hit him next. It yanked him mercilessly downwards, and he was jerked into reality in an instant. His eyes shot open but saw nothing. The distant whispers fell silent, as if afraid to be heard, and his scrambled mind fell into sharp and piercing focus. Everything was dark, save for a thin ring of green in his periphery; he could see the vague shapes of the room ahead of him, shimmering like a reflection, and he knew he had to get there. He reached slowly, pressed his fingers through the reflection, and hauled himself out of the still-open portal.  


He fell, crumpling on the cold metal floor, and lay still. His mind reeled. Something had just shifted, but he didn't know what - he scrambled to regain his senses, clutching his head in both hands in an effort to ground himself and _for the love of god make it stop I can't take it!_ Even the silence was too much. The periphery of his vision had become a blur, and all he could do was wait for everything to pass. Eventually, he began to remember what had happened.  


The last thing he remembered was the portal. Something had gone wrong - had there been a malfunction somehow? He cut through the panic in his mind and tried his best to think. His eyes swept across the darkened room around him. _The lab._ Had he passed out? He told himself, for the moment, that he had. Fragments of the incident came back to him. He'd activated something without knowing it, and had tried to shut it back down. The green ring around his vision brightened. _The radiation inverter_ \- had he broken it? Was that what that was? Radiation poisoning? He sat upright all at once, overcome with dread. _Is that why everything hurts? Am I going to die?_ One hand came back up to the side of his head, and his fingers closed around a fistful of hair. He found he was crying.  


_I'm not gonna die down here._ He refused to admit it to himself, as if his disbelief might spare his life. _I can't die down here._ The pain had subsided, at least, but the numbness that took its place wasn't better. The silence of the lab was too deep, as if he expected some mechanism to clatter quietly away and allow him to dismiss it from his attention. He turned to the darkened space around him, as if he could spot such a mechanism. The lamp in the corner had gone dark, which struck him almost immediately. Had the power gone out? He'd never seen the place pitch-black before. It took him a minute to realize that he still hadn't. There was a light on somewhere - he wouldn't be able to see otherwise. Where was it coming from? The portal behind him had sealed itself shut, allowing nothing through. He didn't remember it being able to do that, but shoved that thought out of his head.  


All at once, he realized why it was so quiet: he couldn't hear his heartbeat. Suddenly frantic, he stared down at himself as if there might be any sort of explanation written on him. What he found was that, along with his missing heartbeat, he wasn't breathing either. He took a deep breath, thinking maybe he'd just lapsed for a second in his panic, but he knew at once that he hadn't. It felt suddenly wrong to him - unnecessary, even - and the answer swiftly and mercilessly smashed him over the head.  


_You're not going to die down here. You already have._  


A spike of terror hit him, bringing new tears to the corners of his eyes, but he shoved the thought out of his head. _I can't be dead - there's just something wrong - maybe it's just radiation poisoning - please dear god I can't be dead -_  


He forced himself to his feet too quickly, making himself dizzy for a moment, and stumbled across the lab into the bathroom by the stairs. A wave of overwhelming nausea hit him; his insides twisted in unison, making him double over. Sickly sweat beaded his forehead. He shut his eyes against it, willing it to pass. After a minute, it did, and he set a hand on either side of the sink and pulled himself back up to his feet.  


The face staring back at him in the mirror wasn't his. The first thing he caught was a flash of green in the dark, and he turned back, startled. He remembered he could still see, even without the lights on - the rings in his periphery had begun to glow on their own. The color had drained from his hair, leaving it death-white, and two sharp fangs protruded from the corners of his mouth. Even his jumpsuit had been rendered in reverse - he stared in disbelief at how utterly unrecognizable he'd become. One gloved hand came up to the mirror, fingers resting on its surface. It had finally fully registered in his mind.  


_You're dead, Danny._  


Something clanked in the lab, and he whirled around. _What was that?_ He peered through the half-open door, scanning the space around him, but saw nothing. He crept out slowly, and a second later another clank echoed through the space. An impossibly bright rectangle blinded him; he realized it had come from upstairs. Someone - one of his parents, probably - was coming down.  


He remembered a second later that his parents were both ghost hunters, and darted under the corner table in a panic. He couldn't let them see him - _please, not like this!_ \- and when the fluorescent lights clicked on, he shrank further into the shadows. The storage cabinet provided a small corner for him, and he curled up as tight as he could in the hopes that they wouldn't see him. Even his legs had fused into some taillike abomination, and he grabbed the end of it in both hands to keep it under control.  


He heard his mother's footsteps descend into the lab. He could see the muted teal of her jumpsuit a moment later; she grabbed something off the worktable, turned to face him, and paused.  


Danny held as still as he could. _Please, just leave me alone._  


After a long silence, she turned and headed slowly up the stairs. The door swung shut behind her, and the lights finally clicked off.  


Danny let himself loose. He knew he couldn't stay; he'd be found out, and probably hacked to pieces. Just the thought made his stomach turn. _What am I gonna do?_ He thought of Sam and Tucker. Assuming he made it out to either one of them - would they even be able to see him? What if they couldn't? How was he going to get to them? Could they even still be friends afterwards? Was he doomed to wander the earth alone? _No, please, not by myself - !_  


He curled back up again in the shadowy corner under the table. Maybe he could explain to his parents what happened. Maybe they'd understand. Maybe they'd help him - but what if they didn't? Where could he go? He couldn't leave everything behind like that; he realized grimly that he didn't have much of a choice. He'd died. It had been decided for him already. He was completely on his own, and he'd done it to himself the second he'd touched the switch.  


He didn't find any comfort.

\- - -

Danny woke to find himself in his room. Everything came back to him through a haze of green - the accident, how he'd died and become a ghost, the intense terror when he'd found out - and he bolted upright. His gaze swept the room in a panic - _how did I get up here?_ \- and he took a deep breath to try and calm himself down.  


_Breathe._  


He looked down at himself. He turned his hands over. _Flesh and bone._ He remembered his ghastly reflection in the mirror downstairs, and how monstrously inhuman he'd been. He reached one hand slowly up to his mouth, and ran one finger along the front of his teeth. _Did I dream all that?_ He'd been so unwaveringly certain that he hadn't - but no trace remained that it had been real. He turned and glanced out the window; morning sunlight streamed in, casting bright rectangles of warmth across the floor and the corner of his bed. Everything was right. Things felt right. Maybe it had just been a nightmare.  


The door opened. It was Jazz; the little "oh!" she made when she saw him said that she clearly hadn't expected him to be awake. "Danny - are you feeling okay?"  


Danny looked back down at his hands again. "Well - I don't know, I - "  


"You were in there for two days," said Jazz quietly, taking a seat on the foot of the bed. She kept her hands clasped in her lap, and wouldn't meet his eyes. "We were all really worried. Danny - what happened? How could you disappear like that?"  


Danny's heart skipped a beat. "Disappear?"  


"You don't remember?" Jazz asked, turning to him, "Mom said you vanished in the middle of the night - she had started to think you were dead. Can't you remember anything?"  


_I guess I thought I was dead too._ Danny shifted uncomfortably. "I - I don't, not really."  


"Not even the part about the ghost portal?" Jazz pressed.  


"Ghost portal?" said Danny. He remembered a fair amount about it, but hesitated before opening his mouth again. How much could he say? His parents had been worried - Jazz too, for that matter - and he knew he had to tell them something. He supposed the truth was better than nothing. "Jazz, listen. I think I really screwed up, I - "  


Jazz just nodded, as if she already knew what he was going to say. "You finished it, didn't you?"  


Danny faltered. "What?"  


"That's how Mom found it when she was looking for you," she explained, "You took out the power on the entire block for seven hours, but you got the thing to work."  


Danny was silent.  


"Mom thinks it must have sucked you in when it activated," said Jazz, "That's the realm of ghosts, Danny. No one's ever been in there before. You don't remember anything at all?"  


Danny's stomach turned. Maybe it would be better to say that he didn't. Slowly, he shook his head. "No."  


"That's okay. We're just glad to have you back," Jazz leaned over, giving him a sisterly hug, and then turned to the door. "I'll let Mom and Dad know you're up. I'm sure they'll be happy to see you." She gave him a little smile, and trotted downstairs.  


"Yeah," said Danny absently. His mind was turning over the accident. Had he really been dreaming? Everything was clouded in his mind. He'd felt different, almost surreal. It must have been a nightmare. The accident had opened up the portal, like Jazz said, and he'd passed out. It had been just a nightmare.  


It wasn't until one of his hands faded and disappeared for a moment that he realized it hadn't been.


End file.
